The Master and Margarita is a ribald, carnivalesque satire featuring  the Devil, true love and a gun-toting cat. It was written in the darkest days of the Soviet Union and became an underground sensation, being first openly published in 1966. There are many editions available in the UK, some of which have included some very scary cats on the cover.

Five Leaves book group is an open group. You are welcome to attend once or as often as you like! The meetings are free and refreshments are provided. All we ask is that you read the book in advance. There’s always a (rather) short introduction by one of the group or a member of Five Leaves staff to get the discussion going.

Let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

You can source the book wherever you like, but in the lead up to the book group we discount the relevant book by 15%.

Anarchism is a much misunderstood and much misrepresented theory. Rejecting the chaos of capitalism and statism, it seeks to create the order of libertarian socialism, a free society of free associates. To discover more, please join Iain McKay (author of An Anarchist FAQ) for an exploration of libertarian ideas by means of six male and six female anarchist thinkers and activists.

Over two nights, the lives and ideas of the founding fathers and mothers of anarchism – including Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Louise Michel and Emma Goldman – will be discussed and their continuing relevance highlighted.

Emma Goldman 

Week one

Founding Fathers, 1840 to 1940: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; Joseph Dejacques;  Michael Bakunin; Errico Malatesta; Peter Kropotkin; Rudolf Rocker

Week two

This event/class/group continues on Monday 4th February. We would encourage you to attend both sessions!

£3.00 on the door, including refreshments.

Let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

St Kilda – the last Scottish island to be evacuated – in 1930, at the request of the remaining 36 islanders – is a World Heritage Site, a military base, a nearly inaccessible dot in the Atlantic. The people who lived there made their living from and lived off fishing and sea-birds, the latter harvested from climbing cliffs. The end came with crop failure, fatalities at sea and fatal illnesses among the islanders, whose numbers had steadily declined after WW1. The island had been occupied for two millennia,  with islanders living in much the same way, using similar tools and eating a similar diet. The island is now the permanent home to a small military base, masses of seabirds, a flock of native sheep and is a place of mystery. The last native islander died two years ago, having left his island aged eight. Few people are able to go there.

This talk by the illustrator and travel writer John Stuart Clark will show slides, including many taken on his own visit to St Kilda.

£3.00 on the door, including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming, on event@fiveleaves.co.uk

Anarchism is a much misunderstood and much misrepresented theory. Rejecting the chaos of capitalism and statism, it seeks to create the order of libertarian socialism, a free society of free associates. To discover more, please join Iain McKay (author of An Anarchist FAQ) for an exploration of libertarian ideas by means of six male and six female anarchist thinkers and activists.

Over two nights, the lives and ideas of the founding fathers and mothers of anarchism – including Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Louise Michel and Emma Goldman – will be discussed and their continuing relevance highlighted.

Louise Michel 

This event/class/group continues from 28th January We would encourage you to attend both sessions!

Founding Fathers, 1840 to 1940: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; Joseph Dejacques;  Michael Bakunin; Errico Malatesta; Peter Kropotkin; Rudolf Rocker

Week two

£3.00 on the door, including refreshments.

Let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

5.45-6.30 Danielle Alakija is a British-born Fijian Olympian of Nigerian descent. She is an activist, filmmaker, poet and founder of [sic.] House. Her work has been featured by the United Nations, World Food Programme, and publications such as /lowerground eighteen/.

‘

One Hand on the Sky’ is a 3 act show intended to showcase an interwoven world suddenly overcome with a wave of nationalism. A mix of comedy, spoken word and general frustration at the state of current affairs, the show details one girl’s navigation through deciding which of her nationalities to keep, as she is forced to give up two of her three passports. The show includes shorts from a UN sponsored documentary on migration and diasporan identity.

6.30-7.00 Shaun Hill is a queer poet exploring how we connect and the mediums we connect within. Infatuated with philosophies of touch and time, he uses performance to co-create with audiences sites of radical intimacy. Stacking images to a critical point in hope to bypass easy cynicism and find some version of a future where love can survive. Shaun likens this process to “pulling an elastic band as far as it can go until only the sting of the line remains”. He is a multiple poetry festival slam winner, co-founder of “Loud&QueerEXETER”, and has featured on stages including at WOMAD.

The First Steps of Time-Travel is a sequence of powerful poems two gay men try to reach other as they repeatedly fail to manoeuvre the circumference of a black hole.

Free. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

This event is part of http://www.ukyoungartists.co.uk/ukya-city-takeover-nottingham-2019

Mother Tongue Readings – Three international writers, two performing their work (in a mix of English and their mother tongue) and one presenting a mini-installation of poetry tea bags 

Victoria-Melita Zammit (from Malta) This short showcase of around 15 minutes is a performance of spoken word poems written by the author. The poems to be read out were written in 2018 and centre around themes of mental health and being LGBT. The 6 pieces are titled ‘How to Tame a Dragon’, ‘An Open Letter’, ‘Pieces’, ‘Chat Bubbles’, ‘Lionheart’ and ‘2008’. The author will also have copies of her publications available for purchase during this showcase.

Marija Sukovic (from Bosnia and Herzegovina) The performance includes spoken words organized by the action the theme, and acting elements, so it moves between monodrama and cycle of poetry. The topics I deal with is death and after-death period, before-birth, ulterior, solitude, and also love and male-female relations.

A mini installation (20 tea bags) as part of this event: Sonia Marpez (from Spain) – Poetry Partea - “a presentation of my poems written on one hundred tea bags full of confetti. On one side of each teabag the poem appear in Spanish and in the other one it has the translation to English. My aim is to play with these familiar concepts and objects to celebrate a poetry party with a very idiosyncratic element in England: tea. Naturally, the visitors can take home these teabags.”

Free, let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Part of http://www.ukyoungartists.co.uk/ukya-city-takeover-nottingham-2019

Nia Davies was born in Sheffield and lives in Wales. Her first book-length collection of poems All fours (Bloodaxe) follows the pamphlets England (Crater),  Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız or Long Words (Hafan/Boiled String) and Then Spree (Salt).

She has been editor of the international quarterly magazine  Poetry Wales since 2014.

Her poems and essays have been published and translated widely and she has appeared at several international festivals. She has worked on and co-curated transcultural collaborative projects – Literature Across Frontiers, Wales Literature Exchange, Wales International Poetry Festival and others.

A frequent collaborator with other poets and artists, she co-curated Gelynion, a Welsh Enemies project on collaboration in contemporary poetry in Wales in 2015 and collaborated with Kannada poet Mamta Sagar on the project Interversions, now a book published by Poetrywala. Her poetry has been translated into Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Kannada, Kurdish, Latvian, Mandarin, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish and Welsh. Nia is currently undertaking practice-based research on poetry, performance and ritual at the University of Salford.

Tickets on the door, £3.00, includes refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

In association with Nottingham Poetry Exchange

Join us for this very special event with Sayaka Murata and Kyoko Nakajima, two authors newly published in English, alongside their translator. In her bestselling Convenience Store  Woman, Sayaka Murata captures the hypnotic consumer culture that reflects modern Japan. By contrast, Kyoko Nakajima’s The Little House is set in the early years of the Shōwa era (1926–89), as the nation sheds the innocence of the past in preparation for brutalities to come. The authors will discuss their work with Ginny Tapley Takemori, translator of both novels, as they explore Japan past and present.

Ticket price: £5 (£3 students) including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Please note earlier start time than usual.

Part of Japan Now 2019. Programmed by Modern Culture in partnership with the Japan Foundation and Sheffield University. 

Supported by Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, the Japan Society and the National Centre for Writing. Part of Japan-UK Season of Culture 2019-20

Milkman sold more copies at Five Leaves in the five days after the Booker announcement than any of the previous winners over a whole year, possibly lifetime sales.  It’s set in Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles.

This novel is not difficult, though it demands attention. Here’s the Guardian review: www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/milkman-anna-burns-review-northern-ireland

Five Leaves book group is an open group. You are welcome to attend once or as often as you like! The meetings are free and refreshments are provided. All we ask is that you read the book in advance. There’s always a (rather) short introduction by one of the group or a member of Five Leaves staff to get the discussion going.

For the avoidance of doubt, Anna Burns is not attending!

Let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

You can source the book wherever you like, but in the lead up to the book group we discount the relevant book by 15%.

Nottingham Rainbow Heritage is an annual celebration of local LGBT success – whether they be football teams, organisations of Trans’ youth, LGBT-friendly workplaces and many more. Five Leaves will be getting an award for our services to the LGBT communities!

Stalls. Free refreshments, Presentations.

Come and talk to us at the Five Leaves bookstall

This event is free with no need to book

Art historian Christine Lindey presents an illustrated talk on socially committed art, based on the life and work of thirty British artists active between the Depression years and the 1960s.

Many of the artists were engaged with groups like the Artists International Association or the Communist Party Arts Group.  She looks at their work, their subjects, their economic survival as artists and their patrons.  Artists include well known painters such as Josef Herman, Ruskin Spear and Eva Frankfurther whereas others have been quietly forgotten. Their work includes socialist realism, modernist art and wartime propaganda art.

Eva Frankfurther – Afro-Caribbean Waitresses c. 1955

Ruskin Spear -  Workers Returning from Nightshift, 1942

Tickets: £4 (students £2) including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk. The book Art for All will be available at a discount on the night.

Part of the talk will include reference to the many German-Jewish emigre artists as part of our contribution to the Insiders/Outsiders national year long celebration of the contribution of German-Jewish emigres to British life and culture.

In this sound and image-illustrated talk, Ruth Charnock looks at Joni Mitchell’s work as a musician, composer, cultural commentator and antagonist, thinking particularly about Mitchell’s album Blue and its depiction of desire, free love, and the late ’60s, whilst also exploring Mitchell’s wider cultural contributions and significance. 

Ruth Charnock is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln, UK. She is the author of Anaïs Nin: bad sex, shame and contemporary culture (forthcoming). Her newly published edited academic book, Joni Mitchell: new critical reading  is normally £96… but we will have copies at £25 on the night!

Tickets: £3.00 including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Ruth will also be speaking at States of Independence in Leicester on March 23. See our later separate listing for that event

Kate Mosse is the author of six novels & short story collections, including the multi-million selling Languedoc Trilogy – Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel – and bestselling Gothic fiction including The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she is currently adapting for the stage. Her books have been translated into 37 languages and published in more than 40 countries. She has also written three works of non-fiction, four plays and curated a collection of short stories inspired by Wuthering Heights.

A champion of women’s creativity, Kate is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction – the largest annual celebration of women’s writing in the world – and sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World. She was named Woman of the Year for her service to the arts in the Everywoman Awards. Deputy Chair of the National Theatre in London, Kate hosts the pre & post performance interview series at Chichester Festival Theatre in Sussex, Platform Events for the National Theatre in London, as well interviewing writers, directors, campaigners and actors at literary and theatre festivals in the UK and beyond.

Kate will be launching the paperback of The Burning Chambers where old secrets cast long shadows.

In association with Nottingham City of Literature

Venue and ticketing to be confirmed

States of Independence is a book festival in a day, attended by several hundred people, featuring around 25 stalls and 25 events, organised by Five Leaves and the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort University.

All events are free and unticketed. There are usually readings, book launches, industry panels – all from the world of independent presses, independent writing, independent thinking.

Come for an hour or come for all day.

We have a cafe on site and all the events are free.

Peter Manson (born Glasgow, 1969) is a poet and translator of poetry.  His books include English in Mallarmé (Blart Books), Poems of Frank Rupture (Sancho Panza Press),  Adjunct: an Undigest and For the Good of Liars (both from Barque Press), and Between Cup and Lip (Miami University Press, Ohio).  Miami UP also publish his book of translations, Stéphane Mallarmé: The Poems in Verse.

Some audio is available on the Archive of the Now website and on archive.org.  Video on YouTube and Vimeo.  Contains mild peril.

In association with Nottingham Poetry Exchange

Tickets: £3 including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Wendell Berry lives and works on his farm in Kentucky. In these essays he writes about nature, the food we eat, the land we live on. He lives without a computer, slowly… Berry is often mentioned as a modern-day Thoreau and as a prophet.

Our book group is open, come for one meeting or as many as you like, and is always the last week of the month. It’s free, and refreshments are provided. For the avoidance of doubt, Wendell Berry is not attending! There’s always a rather short introduction by one of the group or a member of Five Leaves’ staff to get the discussion going.

All we ask is you read the book in advance.

We don’t mind where you source the book, but in the lead up to the book group meeting we offer 15% off the title in question.

Let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Prose poems? Contradiction in terms? Nope, think Emma Lazarus, Allen Ginsberg, Baudelaire, Margaret Atwood, Claudia Rankine, Seamus Heaney, Eileen Myles, Anne Carson, Bertolt Brecht, Elizabeth Bishop… some of the biggest names in poetry write prose poems. At the very least, you’ll know them when you see them!

Jeremy Noel-Tod will be reading some, and discussing the form. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, the poetry critic of the Sunday Times and teaches on the creative writing course at UEA.

In association with the School of English, University of Nottingham

Tickets: £3 on the door, including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk.

On 15 April, thirty years ago this week, in the opening minutes of the FA Cup semi-final between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool, 96 people died in what was the most serious tragedy in British sporting history. For almost thirty years survivors and the families of the dead campaigned against the police, government and the media who blamed the supporters for the tragedy. They eventually won and a second inquest ruled that the 96 were killed unlawfully because of failures by the police and the ambulance services. 

David Cain will be reading from his epic poem which combines eye-witness testimonies of the survivors to create a piece that is part oral history, part documentary theatre.

Another speaker will be added later. The event will be chaired by  Wollaton councillor Steve Battlemuch, a regular at Forest matches, who was at the Forest end at Hillsborough.

Tickets: £3.00 on the door, refreshments included. Booking essential via events@fiveleaves.co.uk